Killing the Messenger
by Neftzer
Summary: With Buffy dead, someone must tell Angel. Willow decides to go. Also starring Gunn, Cordelia, and a cameo by The Host.
1. Waking in a Strange Room

She woke slowly, as though she were pushing through layers of heavy, must-filled, fur coats, reaching for the back of a wardrobe and touching it finally--solid and unmagical. And with that discovery, knowing it was not how she needed it to be. Willow's eyes opened of their own accord--surely she hadn't asked them to, there was not much in this life--this day she cared to see any longer. Recent events came to her slowly, and as each once broke over her for a moment she experienced them again, moving past them like the coats, their pockets of mothballs, their hangers sturdy in the darkness, creaking against the rods that bore their weight. 

_Little Dawnnie was a key?--Glory's own lost housekey to be exact._

_Mrs. Summers was dead._

_Tara was--had been--made mad._

Sometimes Willow would dial back the chain of her life's events--the layers she had to peel past to arrive at the train station that was today--even farther, beginning with; "I am in high school," and progressing on to, "Jesse is a vampire," or "Xander likes Cordelia." But it didn't matter where she started, when she got to the dead-end back wall of the wardrobe it held--refused to give way, to melt into unreality as she needed it to. Buffy, was dead. End of journey, end of bad metaphor, extended simile: poorly followed-through conceit. Happily ever not. 

It proved no task getting up, really, she hadn't technically gone to bed for days since she had arrived, alone, in LA. She'd found the occasional mattress inside the hotel and sat or laid across it for a few hours. She was still in the same clothes she had arrived in. They were now somewhat rumpled. 

_Waiting._

How long? She did not know. She had something to tell, and until another being presented itself to be told, as far as she was concerned she could be found here, a wandering guest without a room number. Send all future correspondence to: _Willow Rosenberg, Practicing Wiccan, c/o The Hyperion Hotel, Los Angeles, CA, USA._

... 

"Yes, Angel. Well, yes, I should have thought of that, shouldn't I have?" Giles' glasses seemed to be more of a bother to him lately than Willow could recall in the past--it seemed he was always removing them now, twirling the frames nervously in his fingers, polishing off some imaginary smudge on the lenses. "Thank you for reminding me, Willow. I should call, I suppose..." his voice trailed off. 

"Don't be daft," Spike broke in, from where he had been gazing out Giles' picture window at the night sky--his presence at this time (as always of late) un-explained as well as illogical. "Can't just ring a bloke and tell him his best girl's gone the way. Heartless, that. Bloody heartless." He turned from the window, seeming to get an idea. "Tell him myself, I will. Yes. Now that I think of it I quite fancy holiday--leaving the old Hellmouth for a jaunt to LA." 

But his banter to Willow's ear seemed to have lost something, and now lacked a sort of kick or energy--the rise he used to get out of disagreeing with all of them--any of them. Like the husk of a human he was, Spike himself was beginning to sound hollow. 

She felt too tired to remind him out loud of The Ring of Amarra and the torture he had enacted on Angel the last time the two had met--or the fact that she didn't imagine Angel's memory would have to be goaded to recall the incident. Instead, she simply announced that she would be the one to go. No one tried to change her mind. 

As the bus was pulling out of the station she found herself in a strange moment of deja-vu; this was the very way Buffy had taken out of town the spring she had sent Angel to hell to prevent that year's apocalypse. In that moment Willow learned that when you cry to yourself on the bus the other passengers don't ask questions, they just assume you're sad to be leaving Sunnydale behind. 

"Can I get you a tissue?" a kind-looking elderly lady had asked, and her words had run together so it sounded like, "caneyegedjewatishew?" 

...to be continued... 

Disclaimer: Willow and the others, Buffy, Angel, Giles, Spike, etc. are neither mine, nor, it would seem, the WB's [anymore]. 

Thank you in advance for leaving feedback. My other fic can be (to an extent) found here, or (in full) at my own site, [The OutBack Fiction Shack][1]. Thanks. 

   [1]: http://www.royaltoby.com/shack



	2. Don't They Know It's the End of the Worl...

Only a few years ago wandering around a deserted and abandoned hotel would have given her a major wiggins. _ Major wiggins_, left over from an ill-conceived junior high era sleep-over with Xander, where they had huddled under seperate sleeping bags (hers Rainbow Brite, his Aquaman). Seperate at first, then together; both Rainbow Brite and Aquaman shaking like leaves--if leaves could shake from fear and terror, that is. That had been pre-high school, pre-Buffy, pre-knowing that Sunnydale was a Hellmouth and that the scariest things in town weren't in fact to be found at the local VideoTowne, rent one new release, get your second catalog selection free on Tuesdays. 

So the hotel, though she would agree parts (whole sections, in fact) of it were creep-a-licious, didn't throw her so much off her game. She didn't expect a ghost at every turn, floating balloons and twin girls to materialize (though she had always found the concept of twins ooky). Instead, while she waited she took to wandering up and down The Hyperion's corridors, felling more like Snow White having wandered into the dwarves cottage and found it in desperate need of a spring cleaning, or like Goldilocks trying out the possessions of the Three Bears. Not that she had any intention of enlisting herself as a Merry Maid--and no matter the number of chairs (broken and otherwise) she sat down on, or beds she faked sleep in, none of them felt "just right." They were too empty for that. 

But as she wandered she did occasionally pick up a fallen sconce or brick or unhinged door where she needed to to clear her path. The building was old, 98% of it long ago far-beyond the moniker "fallen into disrepair," and she wondered if Angel and the others ever walked among it, hiking the seemingly endless corridors, looking into rooms that would have smelled shut-up and old as grandmothers if their windows hadn't been knocked out and bird's hadn't been nesting among the chandeliers, tiny mice families being born in the bedding, and water from antique taps in the bathroom sinks running rusty--if it would run at all. 

... 

The first morning after--after Buffy--had not been the hardest. It had been an easy morning, the remembrance of the previous dawn had not yet settled in, but hid somewhere among so many other thoughts, so many other duties she had to perform. It had been the fifth day that proved to be her breaking point. Willow had never imagined the world without Buffy. It was not that she thought Buffy couldn't die--she had no delusions of immortality for her friend--only she had always simply assumed that as Buffy went so did the world: no Buffy, no world. But here was the sun, still coming up, the cable bill still coming due, pop quizzes being given, toddlers celebrating birthdays. They didn't know the world had ended. They didn't know the girl that had saved it. 

...to be continued... 

...... 

Disclaimers: See bottom Part One. For those who left feedback: don't worry, yes, undoubtably Angel will get to say his piece. ;) As the author, I can darn near guarantee it. Thanks. 


	3. Not a Lot Going On Upstairs

When it had become apparent (as it had in the first few moments of her entering the building) that no one was home (despite the invitation of the unlocked front doors) Willow found her way to yet another bus stop, and Cordelia's address. _Her_ door _was_ locked as one might expect when no one was home. There wasn't much to say about it beyond that--she was in no shape to be taking mental notes to share with the group back in Sunnydale about how Cordelia was living. 

Willow knew that Wesley had been working with Cordelia and Angel lately, but she had no idea of his address, which though she knew was simple enough for her to find in LA with a surname like Wyndam-Pryce to go by, she still found that on this mission finding Wesley would more or less leave her feeling like she had found no one at all. 

She walked down to a corner store near Cordelia's apartment, bought a loaf of wheat bread and a jar of peanut butter, and caught the bus back to the stop nearest The Hyperion. She was half-torn between wanting someone to have finally arrived, and contrarily hoping (on account of the bread and peanut butter, and how bizarre it would look if she were to enter with it in hand) that they hadn't. 

Buying the food had more or less been a nod to Tara, whom she had called from the corner store's pay phone. Their conversation had been brief; she had arrived, no one was home--no, she would stay and see if anyone showed. And she had been asked to promise that she would not forget to eat, but the best she could summon had been that she would _buy_ something to eat--she hadn't been able to say that she would eat it. After all, she wasn't even hungry. Hadn't been for days. 

... 

Years ago, Willow's biggest dream had always been to spend the summer after their high school graduation backpacking across Europe with Xander. And by the time her freshman year began she already had more than a drawer of her desk at home stocked with brochures for hostels, directions on how to get Eurail passes, charts for exchange rates, and painstakingly cut-out pictures from touring magazines of places they would visit. (Although Xander was going to come along, his interest in planning at such an early stage was minimal at best.) This was not a dream she had even abandoned when she met Buffy, rather, she had simply added Buffy's name to her passenger manifest. One day at lunch she had informed her of it. 

"When we go to Europe--" (it was always when, never, "if"), "what're your top three?" 

"Top three?" Buffy had asked, tearing into her BLT and expertly catching one of the tomatoes that was about to go AWOL in the vicinity of her new shantung skirt. 

"You know, top three spots you would be sorry if you never go to see." 

Sometimes it escaped Willow that not everyone had lists about such things, or enough research on said topic that they could easily pull three European locales out of their memory. 

"Well," Buffy stalled, stuffing her mouth with another bite of BLT. "The Eiffel Tower." She nodded, pleased with herself. "I would like to see the Eiffel Tower." 

"Oh, yes, that will be nice." Willow smiled. "Already on the list." She looked at Buffy, anticipating her list's number two. 

Buffy chewed her lip. Took another large bite of BLT to stall for time, a studied sip of Diet Coke. "Big Ben, and Parliament. Yes." She nodded again, clearly even more pleased with herself. 

"Well, okay," Willow encouraged, "those are both in London, we'll count them as one. So where else?" 

Buffy looked down at her sandwich, which was quickly disappearing due to her nerve-induced noshing. She settled on the Diet Coke, but saw the happy anticipation in Willow's eyes almost turn to a tiny frown as she moved to take a swig and stall further. She grabbed for it quickly in spite of this and drank, pulling the can away from her mouth to ask, as much as to say, "Prussia?" Her voice went up on the end of the word and she smiled nervously. 

"Oh, uh," Willow hemmed and hawed, finally settling on writing down Prussia on her list (she could re-copy it later). "I've heard Prussia is very beautiful," she lied. "And, uh, well-governed. The citizens are very friendly." 

But Willow never did re-copy that list, and somewhere along the way she realized that her dream had been deferred, and then later, at graduation (actually, in preparing for the massacre that was to be their graduation) she noticed that she no longer held backpacking across Europe as a possible reality for herself. She wanted to go with Buffy, she wanted to stand and hear Xander say, "Look Buffy, Big Ben, Parliament," and hear Buffy laugh. She wanted to buy a loaf of French bread and eat it on the grass in front of the Eiffel Tower, tearing off pieces of it in big chunks and taking turns throwing small bits in the air for Xander to catch in his mouth and impress the French girls. 

Had Buffy known it was better not to make such plans? Had she assumed that Willow _would_ go to Europe, with Xander--without her? Had she thought that? Had she thought about it at all? Surely Willow had mentioned it enough times, tried to drag her into planning the trip, a trip Buffy could never really in good conscience go on. Maybe they could fly as far as Las Vegas or Phoenix, even, before they would get a call--somehow--that she was needed in Sunnydale, another big evil to squash. And if they got no call they'd only worry, knowing what life at home was like, and what a Hellmouth less a Slayer could cause. 

Slaying was like farming, except it was more about the killing. 

And you couldn't take vacations. 

... 

After a day and night alone in The Hyperion, Willow had started to think (not in a fearful way, but in more of a fascinated, intrigued, mesmerized-way) that no one _would_ ever return to the hotel and she would be found, some time later, still circling its upper floors, their intricacies of hallways now obscured by shredding wallpaper, old carpet torn in spots like wounds gouged into the floor. And here she would have become lost, the mad woman in the attic with a conscience to unburden, a weight to share, a story to tell, but no one to listen. After enough time, she had to suppose, she would forget the story herself. And then--but she realized that this whole line of thought was less a fascination with the macabre than the simple effect of unintentional fasting. She was light-headed. Returning to her bread and peanut butter in the lobby, she made herself a functional (if somewhat bland) version of a sandwich, and washed it down with water from the cooler. She picked through some of the papers on the desk, and near the filing cabinet, telling herself she was engaged in detective work, rather than just being a nosy Parker. 

She heard the front doors swing open and at once she knew: this is what she should have been doing all along. Was there any faster way to get walked in on than to begin snooping? Several men and a leggy woman in business suits had entered. They were carrying leather porfolios. To her eye they did not look out of place in the lobby, but something told her inveterately they nonetheless were. Willow held her position behind the front desk, quiet, yet attentive, expecting them to walk over and greet her--perhaps they were also looking for Angel. 

They spoke for a few moments among themselves (she could not make out what they were saying, though they seemed to be appraising the architecture of the foyer's high ceiling). 

She cleared her throat in a bid for attention, and they turned toward her, as a unit. 

The leggy woman spoke, "What are you doing back there?" 

Willow answered her as she always instinctively answered people who asked her questions (though she often regretted it after the fact--that she was so easy to manipulate). "I'm waiting for Angel to get back." 

"Oh, you know Angel?" The woman's voice was conversational. 

It seemed important (though Willow was not sure why) to answer as obliquely as possible. "I...just got into town, and..." She held up a battered business card she still had in her hands from her look-over of the desk. 

"Are you in the need of some help?" The woman eyed the last few bites of Willow's peanut butter on wheat sandwich (and her rumpled clothes, as well). 

"I might be," Willow answered. 

A card (much more professional, and on nicer-quality card-stock than Angel's) was handed to her by one of the gentlemen. 

"We like to help the helpless as well," the woman offered. "If Angel doesn't show--just give us a call--collect if you like." She smiled. "We'll accept the charges." 

And they left as group, a shuffle of dark-toned and spit-shone wingtips--and her high, high, spike heels, like _nothing_ a girl in a business suit had any business wearing. 

Willow looked down at the opposing cards, one in each hand. The first, a bad sketch of a moth or a butterfly, a worm squished in a puddle--or a first grader's rendering of an angel. The other, an invitation from Lilah Morgan, working for the law firm of Wolfram and Hart. So they helped people too, that was nice. Willow laid both cards back down on the desk, and wished she had thought to ask the Wolfram and Hart people if _they_ had any idea where Angel was or when he would be back. They had not seemed surprised at all that he wasn't here. 

...to be continued... 

... 

DISCLAIMERS: SEE end of CHAPTERS I and II. 

Thanks for the feedback! Hope you're all still liking it...Neftzer. [The OutBack Fiction Shack][1]. 

   [1]: http://www.royaltoby.com/shack



	4. Room to Let, Fifty Cents

Willow came to a halt outside one of the Hyperion's rooms, in a hallway that seemed better-lit than its brother and sister hallways, its door looking sturdier than the others in the building to which she could compare it. It wasn't locked, though, so she pushed it open. 

_This was where Angel lived--or was that the right term, since he technically wasn't, didn't..._

Once across the threshold she found it impossible to imagine the rest of the hotel around her at all, everything that was broken-down and cobwebby was shamed by the excellent level to which this set of rooms had been refurbished. She tried to imagine for a moment Angel stripping off old wallpaper and pasting up new, laying out a roll of carpet, handling issues such as wiring not up to code or truculent issues of plumbing. She squeezed her eyes shut and willed her mind to imagine Angel doing the most industrial of chores; welding, for example, but when she thought of him pushing back the helmet she had to smile as Jennifer Beals' face was behind the shield, and not that of the vampire's. Well, so her imagination could only stretch so far. That her face could still stretch into a smile surprised her more. 

Someone would have done all these tasks for him if he had not done them himself. Someone like Xander, perhaps. How she wished Xander were here! And at the same time could not bear the thought of having dragged him into this. The rooms were comfortable, and she like the purple walls and the painted white wooden doors. Willow made her way over to the bed, neatly-made as though Angel were expecting a visitor. Nothing in the rooms was out of place to suggest either a hurried exit or a forced departure on his part. 

Nothing like Buffy's room, nothing like--but she wasn't going to think of that right now. Instead she thought of Xander. Xander welding-- next to Jennifer Beals, maybe. Good, beautiful Xander, who actually _had_ a profession, something useful he had become. A bona fide accomplishment, a pass to Normal Life Land. 

It was not something Willow thought she could have admitted when Buffy was alive, but in truth she was not sure she had planned for the future as practically as had Xander. Despite attending college, and loving every moment in classes, discussions, or paper writing, she had yet to create any sort of "real world" application for herself. Surely she was suited for many things, but she had deliberately stream-lined her life to take her B.A. in Buffy Assistance. How marketable those skills were solo, sans slayer (despite the fact the Watchers were indubitably searching for the next one), was yet to be seen. 

She lay down on Angel's bed, not wanting to think about her life choices anymore, but unable to conjure anything better suited to thought. And so she passed the night. 

... 

Most of the night, anyway. Sometime just before dawn she woke, startled, like her ears had popped from the rapid sort of ascent or descent on a plane flight. The hotel remained on its foundation where it had for the last 50 years or so, though, and she finally talked herself out of her momentary wigging episode. It was just another thing to add to the list of strange sensations experienced when sleeping away from home. She rose, and tried to straighten the Willow-like shape in the covers of Angel's bed--unsuccessfully. She'd have to confess to him that she'd taken the liberty of making it hers, if only for a few hours. For a moment she got mad. Angry that no one was here, that she had been left, doddering about like Diogenes, looking for someone who couldn't be found. And she stomped downstairs to the lobby determined at least to kick a chair if nothing (or no one) else presented itself in due course. 

...to be continued... 

. 

Disclaimer: Willow and the others, Buffy, Angel, Giles, Spike, etc. are not mine, and I reap no monetary rewards by putting them to work here, only the twisted, dirty pleasure that comes from messing in their minds. 

Thank you all for your generous feedback. I am in love with this mechanism "xing" that delivers them directly to my e-mail account. If I can find "xing"'s digits I think we could enter into a successful long-term relationship based on mutual respect and genuine affection. 

My other fic can be (to an extent) found here, or (in full) at my own site, [The OutBack Fiction Shack][1]. Thanks...("xing:" Call me!) Neftzer. 

   [1]: http://www.royaltoby.com/shack



	5. And So You're Back, From Outer Space

Willow Rosenberg was angry. She was angry and frustrated and confused and dreadfully unhappy, and each feeling seemed ready to take her over entirely in their turn with every step coming down the Hyperion's stairs and into the lobby. By the time she reached the marble-floored foyer she thought she might scream, but instead she pulled back and kicked the first chair she saw. She kicked it hard, and in retrospect. inexpertly. She didn't get a second kick in, the immediate physical pain from the first mis-placed boot to the solid wooden form of the chairs leg had broken it--snapped it nearly into two pieces. That was what it had done to the chair. What it had done to the instep of her foot remained to be seen. She slumped onto a nearby couch--the chair was no good for sitting in now, it would tilt off balance without that leg to support the weight. There was pain, but it felt good in a way. She did not take her shoe off to inspect its origins. 

It was only when the pain began to recede a minute or two later that she lost what the pain had given her--a momentary relief from her thoughts. Now they fell on her with a disturbing, diamond-sharp clarity. No one was coming back, she was sure. Angel had left. Just as Buffy had left. Just as Buffy had run away to this city the first time. _Without a word._ Willow was so tired of being left behind, uninformed, alone. Xander had hooked up with Cordelia behind her back--she knew that was small, knew that was in the past, so far in the past, but there it was, top of the list, number one in a series of betrayals. The first step of many. And Oz, would he have told her he was leaving if she hadn't walked in on him packing? Or would he have left without a word as well? What was it about her that inspired such reactions from people? Had she ever judged them? No. Well, sometimes. Had she cut them out of her life? Her decisions? No. Never. 

She had never done anything to rate abandonment. Of that she was sure. 

Tears were being pressed out of her eyes with each blink, and she let them continue. There was no one here beyond herself and her despair, and slowly she thought her despair would swallow her spirit and then she would be gone, too. She let her head slip into her hands, stared at the tips of her shoes, her eyesight blurred by tears. 

And a girl laughed. Far away, Willow thought, down the street under the night sky--at least she was pretty sure it was still night, not yet dawn, anyway. That girl didn't know--that's why she could laugh, could still find things funny, or amusing, or ironic--because she was ignorant of what sort of place the world had become, or else she was in denial of it. Willow thought no one could know what she knew, feel what she felt and still laugh--not like that anyway, free, unfettered, bubbly. 

And she heard a door open--far away, she thought. Someone spoke, "...place like," the man said, very distant--across the street, in the neighboring building, she thought. 

But she was wrong. 

The French doors right here at the Hyperion had been thrown open, as though the guards in a palace were ready to announce the arrival of the princess, and standing at the head of a group of people was Angel, and next to him Cordelia wearing--Princess Leia's _Return of the Jedi_ dancer costume. And something of the ebullience of their entry nearly surprised the tears out of Willow, and her slow reaction seemed to give the passage of time its cue and it halted as well. 

Cordelia half-said something--Willow's ears didn't seem to be working, couldn't form words out of the sounds she uttered. 

She thought maybe they were returning from a party--which seemed grotesque when she imagined it: off on a bacchanal while Buffy--while the world--while she... 

Willow made eye contact with Angel against her own better judgement and he cut Cordelia off. 

"It's Buffy," he said. 

And Willow knew in that moment that she had been wasting valuable time since her arrival, doing anything but practicing how she would tell Angel about what had happened. She had avoided using the words, visualizing speaking to him, organizing the story. She had been in denial of why she was here and now it was too late. It was time. 

...to be continued... 

. 

Disclaimer: Willow and the others, Buffy, Angel, Giles, Spike, etc. are not my property, and as a rule I don't condone the ownership of humans by other humans. That said, I am not getting paid for their work here, but then neither are they. It's more like a charity benefit, a gala even. 

Other fic o'mine can be (to a limited extent) found here, or (in full) at my own site, [The OutBack Fiction Shack][1]. Thanks...Neftzer. 

   [1]: http://www.royaltoby.com/shack



	6. Break It To Me Gently

"I slept in your bed," Willow confessed pointlessly to the group frozen at the Hyperion's doors, from her seat across the open foyer. 

Those behind Angel stood as frozen as did their leader. Only Cordelia shifted her weight, and the coin-covered bikini outfit she wore jangled softly off-key. Angel looked at Willow for a lengthy moment. His brow lowered with the intensity of his stare and she felt like he was able to see things about her, within her, that she would rather not have shared. But his gaze, as always when he chose to focus the full force of it on her, was mezmerizing and she was unable to look away or to even blink back the still-coming tears. 

She didn't know what to do next. Blurt out the awful truth and exit? She should have had a plan. 

"Gunn. Office." Angel said, not removing his eye-contact from Willow, his tone as always mono, and at first she was not sure she was invited. Perhaps, after all, there were some things he needed to straighten out with the tall Black man following him over to the hotel's front desk area. Perhaps, but Angel paused half-way across the center of the marble floor and bid her to join them with only the inclination of his head. She complied without thinking, and momentarily found herself installed in a seat in the office with the same desk covered in papers that she had ransacked unsuccessfully for clues to where this man had been. 

This man, Angel, this vampire whose return she had anticipated, anxiously believing it imminent from the moment she arrived. This man whose whereabouts had been of such great consequence to her that she had stooped to searching his personal effects--his business files, his mirror-less medicine cabinet upstairs. This man whose always (how could she have forgotten?) un-nerving appearance had, in the flicker of an eye, made her reverse and re-examine all such urges she had felt toward him, every second's thought, every wish to be in his company, to have him return. This terrifyingly dark, brooding 200-year-old creature who carried so much sorrow, so much capacity for evil, and whose eyes alone had only moments ago burned through her with a fire not unlike the one she felt inside, fueling the tears still spilling from her eyes. 

_Go to LA and break the news to Angel, Willow. Do it in person, Willow. He deserves that much doesn't he, Willow?_ What had she been thinking? 

Before Gunn pulled the gate down over the opening at the front desk-area and turned this office into a private, windowless room, she saw Cordelia walk forward, making her intent of joining them obvious. Angel turned from where he had been standing frozen in what Willow assumed was thought just beyond the office's doorway, and put his hand out to stop her. 

"Just. Gunn." Willow heard him say, and she saw the same look pass over Cordelia's face that she had the time the other girl had walked in on her and Xander kissing. 

Angel entered the now closed-off space, and Gunn leaned into the wall behind the desk next to him. They both focused their eyes on her. And stared. 

Her throat went dry. She no longer seemed to have the ability to speak, she had gone aphasic, and if her knees had been settled against each other she was pretty sure they would have been knocking. 

Time passed. And passed. 

A loaf of wheat bread, partially eaten, and an opened jar of peanut butter sitting in his line of sight finally distracted Angel, and he seemed to come back to himself, back to the room they occupied, the present air that two of them breathed. 

"This is Charles Gunn," he introduced the man next to him. "Gunn, this is Willow--" he stalled out. 

"Rosenberg," she prompted him, and with that recovered her voice if not her presence of mind. "Willow Rosenberg. Pleased to meet you." 

"Yeah," said Gunn, not impolitely. "What's up?" 

"Dead," said Willow, like an unexpected hiccup, choking over her friend's name. "Buffy's dead," and she noticed that Angel's intent, but seemingly-impassive expression did not change. 

In contrast, Gunn immediately sprang away from the wall as though it had burned him, and spun around, turning to Angel, his hands up in a gesture of surrender. "Look, Angel, this here's personal, and I'd just as soon wait outside with the others." 

Without replying to him, without altering that same intense, unreadable expression, Angel announced, "Gunn is here to share what you have to say with the others." 

Gunn slumped back into the wall, obviously knowing that he had lost. He would stay. 

Everything Angel spoke came out in a tone so even, so steady, that Willow found she didn't know how to take it. And something in its evenness upset her. Her brows came together in a frown, though her mouth held to its linear shape. This expression always made her look suspicious. 

"How," Angel stated more than asked. 

At first every word Willow said, each sentence that she used to relate the last year or so of their lives in Sunnydale made it harder to breathe, made her feel even more like hot pokers were being jammed into her chest, her back. She stumbled over the simplest words, struggled with remembering the clearest facts. But by the time she had talked her way into placing Buffy on Glory's scaffolding, began to relate what had occurred up there second-hand via Dawn's own fragmented account, by the time she could see the end of the story--the final few steps down the hallway to the door that would mark her completion of this task she had volunteered herself for, she was so caught up in the mechanics of relating her tale that the hot pokers had gone and her lungs filled themselves easily and unconsciously, and the words were there offering themselves for her use. 

And all the while Angel sat behind the desk, entirely still, as he listened to her. Since he did not breathe his chest neither rose nor fell, his nostrils did not flare. He asked no questions, evinced no shock. 

_Where,_ Willow thought to herself, _were the red-hot pokers stabbing into him?_

His expression remained deadpan, poker-faced she might have said if he had given her reason to believe he was hiding anything from her. Twice he may have blinked, no more. 

. 

...to be continued... 

. 

Disclaimer: Willow and company belong to someone else. 

Other Neftzer-iffic fiction can be found here, or in its entirety at my own site, [The OutBack Fiction Shack][1]. Thanks. 

   [1]: http://www.royaltoby.com/shack



	7. All Told

When Willow was finished, drained finally of everything and anything she could think of to say, when she had also added what she thought might be pertinent details about how dead Buffy had been--notes of bodily trauma, no pulse, no breathing, unresponsive to attempts to resuscitate her, and many, many other minutiae, Willow came back to into her body feeling more than a little off-balance, horrified that she had managed to pull such a detailed and coherent account out of herself. And frightened that eventually (today being the first of many steps toward this end) that was all this story--this part of her life--would become; an account, a tale, something dry and unemotional. At the thought her stomach turned in on itself. She closed her eyes and waited for Angel's reaction, his questions. Perhaps, his tears. 

She waited, and then she heard the legs of the chair he had been sitting in push back. When she opened her eyes he was already standing. He took a step away from behind the desk. 

He spoke. "See that Willow gets home." 

Willow looked to Gunn, who nodded in response to Angel's order, but said nothing. 

Was this really happening? Was Angel really walking away from her, his back retreating without a word, without explanation? 

She did not know what her expectation had been, but it surely was not this. Was not anything like this; days stretching out before her, waiting, waiting, going slowly mad, desperate to tell someone about this cancer of grief and loss and confusion she now held inside, this thing that was slowly killing her, consuming her life. Desperate to tell this person, Angel, someone who could understand, who had lived so much longer, seen so much more. This person who could tell her something, anything, say words and add some meaning, alleviate some pain. This person, closest in the world to Buffy. This person Buffy had loved. Angel, whom she had sent to Hell and still her love for him tormented her even across that distance. _Buffy's Angel._

And this, this was how he treated her, Buffy's Willow? The woman who had given him back his soul? Given it back so he could feel something in moments like this, so he could care, so he could love Buffy. Forever. That's what a soul did, right? Made you human, made you fragile and vulnerable and made you care and hurt and cry and connect with other people. And this, this was how he chose to use it? Gift, curse, it was all the same, Willow thought, her own mortal soul no different, complicated gift/curse that it was. She remembered the glowing orb of Thessala, the pain and exhaustion she had waded through to save Angel from the demon that was Angelus. The soul she had conjured for him--for Buffy. So he could love Buffy. _Goddess, where was his damned soul now?_

His shoes ground into the hardwood floor as he walked toward the doorway and out of the room. Willow's eyes went black until she could no longer see the room, as though a rolling black-out or eclipse were falling unscheduled over the Hyperion. Wind from nowhere swept in tiny cyclones around the office, papers lifted off the desktop, Gunn's jacket snapped around him, and in the whistling she heard a tormented voice in her head like a chant, but only she heard it, shallow and magical. 

Gunn swallowed as though he were about to speak. 

And Angel pulled the door open to leave, as though nothing had changed. 

Willow stood from where she had been sitting and spun to face the doorway, her right arm extended, palm out. In an instant the wind fell silent, was sucked entirely from the room, and the doorknob pulled violently out of Angel's grasp and slammed shut so firmly that the echo of it played in the foyer like rival strikes of Thor's hammer. She could hear the office go very still, and even the sounds of Gunn's breathing disappeared. The black veil did not lift from her eyes, but she knew Angel still had not turned to face her. 

"Walking out that door," she spoke slowly, her voice ancient, gravelly, and hateful--nothing like Willow--"would be a mistake." 

Angel did not speak and he did not turn around. 

It did not seem possible, but the black of her eyes deepened, and across the room she felt more than knew that Gunn was beginning to think about whether he would have to intervene. Though on whose behalf she could not discern. 

"Apologize to me," she demanded of Angel, still in that foreign-to-her-own ears voice. "Tell me you're sorry that I had to wait here, alone. For days, not knowing where you were. Tell me you wish it hadn't been that way. Tell me." The unnatural wind was starting to pick up again. "Tell me." It whistled and settled around her, pulling at her clothes, disturbing her hair. But her black, black eyes did not blink. 

No response. 

Willow's hand went out a second time, and as it lifted so did the chair in which she had been sitting. She took a step toward Angel and the chair levitated and careened into the wall, smashing to bits. "Tell me." 

A voice, low like a growl, issued from Angel's throat. "Grief does strange things to people, Willow." 

Thinking it a challenge, a stick of the wooden chair leg leapt into Willow's still-outstretched hand and she advanced upon Angel's turned back. "You don't even begin to know the half of it. Tell me!" she screamed in an equally low growl, "Tell me that you're sorry, You--loved her--that--Buffy--" And a force from within sent her flying at him, but Angel turned at the last possible moment and caught the wrist of her hand that held the make-shift stake. The wind in the room blew wild, sparks now alighting here and there dangerously close to large quantities of paper. 

Finally, Angel spoke. "Is this what you want to see, Willow? Huh? This?" 

And as he revealed his face to her, the black of her vision began to lift and her rage lost steam. He had a terrible grip on her right wrist, so much so that she couldn't be sure the tears coming again to her eyes were not from that pain rather than the one inside. His face was fading back and forth with each phrase he spoke, pong-ing between the human visage she had grown to know as his and the demon mask of his vampire self, as though he could not control the transformations nor hold the demon side back. 

"This, is anger, Willow." His arm now shook where he held hers. Tightly, too tightly. "This is anger and pain and fear and loss and _anything_ else that's eating you and me from the inside. Take a good look." He choked out the last line. 

"Take a good look," he offered again, and his face was swallowed by the demon, but the demon's eyes wept tears as no demon should, and then the eyes were Angel's and the face was Angel's, but the growl that came out of the throat was the demon's and just as her now-clear eyes could focus on one countenance it would already be morphing into the other. 

And then he let go of her, and it was not until then that she realized that he had been holding her off the ground, levered by his grip on her. She stumbled slightly in coming into contact with the floor, but recovered her balance quickly enough. The wind was gone, as were the flying sparks and the air no longer held a tinderbox-like feeling. No more explosions. 

But it was not over. She would not let it be. 

"Tell me," said Willow, her voice haggard-sounding now, tired, magic-less. "Tell me you're sorry. Tell me you loved her--loved her, too." 

Angel walked to the corner with the shattered chair parts and began picking through the larger ones and putting them into the trash can. 

His action put his back to them, still Willow could feel that his face, his very being, was still struggling to endure the chaos her news had brought on. 

"How could I have not?" he answered, facing the trash can, letting the wooden shards fall from his hands and reverberate dully, like dirt on a coffin. "I'm sorry, Willow. Sorry. She was the best of everything." His voice dropped and she thought she heard him mutter, "peanut butter. Chocolate." He took a step back, still hiding his face from view. "Did someone say that at the service?" he asked the air in front of him. "Someone should have said that..." but he couldn't finish, his exterior had shifted again and his foot came back and the trash can went flying into the desk and the leg of the desk (which had perhaps always been wobbly) gave way and the desk tilted, and the papers on it sloughed off onto the floor, magnifying the original mess by twenty. 

Gunn had side-stepped just in time, and he walked with purpose to the spot where Willow stood, swaying and near-exhaustion. 

"Let's give him some space," Gunn explained under his breath, his arm guiding her out of the rapidly dismantling office and through the door to the foyer where the rest waited. 

Willow watched as Gunn pulled the door to and then turned to face the others. All three were standing as though ready for battle, armed to the teeth. Wesley had even found a large metal shield. In one hand (the other held a crossbow and there was a wicked-big knife and can of mace at her waist) Cordelia was holding a giant hub-cap-shaped axe out to Gunn (Willow could hardly think how her slim classmate was even managing to lift it), and the new girl, the one with long brown hair, had rescued a rotten piece of wood from somewhere in the hotel, its tip covered in rusted nails, and was brandishing it with no small amount of pride. 

"I must say," she chirped to no one in particular, "it is always good to have a cudgel in hand; for demons or three-legged Horhkvah." She leveled it at Willow like one would a machine gun or rifle and yipped, "pow-pow-pow." 

. 

...to be continued...the final chapter to come... 

. 

Disclaimer: Willow etc. belong to someone else. 

Other Neftzer-licious fiction can be found here, or in its entirety at my own site, [The OutBack Fiction Shack][1]. Thanks. 

   [1]: http://www.royaltoby.com/shack



	8. There's No Place Like Any Place But Here

Willow felt herself stiffen with each "pow" that issued from the other girl's lips. His arm still around her, Gunn must've felt it too. 

"Well," said Wesley, inhaling and then exhaling with equal purpose, "onward. Though it would be good, I think, if before embarking for Sunnydale we stopped for some take-away. I know we've all been feeling rather peckish--on top of needing some sleep." 

Cordelia looked to Willow. "You can fill us in on the way," she offered, and motioned more strongly for Gunn to take the axe she held. 

Willow found strength to stand alone from the comforting expansion and contraction of Gunn's chest next to her, and she stepped out of his half-embrace. Angel had been wise to ask this man in to listen. Now she would not have to tell her story a second time, and neither would Angel. Gunn could simply relate the story of the past few weeks in Sunnydale. He didn't know Buffy--had no emotional connection there. It would not tear him up inside each time. To him it would be just a story, unfortunate, but hardly life-altering. It seemed to Willow a good idea to have someone like that around, and she wished such a person existed for her in Sunnydale, like a scout running ahead, checking the path, clearing it of obstacles--a person un-attached to the trauma. A translator. 

"Do you think Angel's going to change clothes?" Cordelia asked, craning her neck to see the door of the office. "'Cause if he is, I only need a second to--" she gestured to her coin-bikini, "get more ready to kick some evil in the--" 

Gunn swung his head around to Cordelia, the line of his mouth showing that he didn't relish what he would have to say, and he cut her off. "I'm sure you all heard in there..." He referenced the ruckus of wind and noise that surely could not have gone unnoticed. 

"_Screen door slammed,_" Cudgel Girl began to sing, breathy like Tori Amos, clearly far-off in her own world. "_Mary's dress sways, like a vision she dan_--" 

"Fred," prompted Wesley, every bit the schoolmarm Willow remembered him to be. "Fred." 

The girl stopped, her face attentive, but not chastened. 

"Too late," Gunn told them bluntly and without preamble. "Buffy's died." He did not stop looking at Cordelia, and Willow thought that a hellmouth could open right here in the floor of the Hyperion's lobby and still, Charles Gunn would not have taken his eyes off Cordelia. 

And for good reason, that. The hubcap axe Cordelia had been holding slid from her grip and Gunn had to do a near-dive to grab it before it hit the floor. He managed just barely to evade slicing himself in the catching process. 

"How dead is dead?" the girl Willow now knew was called Fred asked. "All dead, or only mostly dead?" Her brows came together. "Stupid cow, Fred," she muttered to herself. "I seem to remember something important about that." 

In response--the other three offered none, though they turned toward her--Wesley steered Fred out of the lobby and in the direction of the front doors, promising, "let's go, what do you say, and look into getting you that cigarette you asked about earlier?" His voice faded as they moved away from the inner ceiling's acoustics, "and perhaps a burrito." 

"Buffy's dead," echoed Cordelia, looking first at Gunn, his gaze unwavering, who had made what she clearly believed to be an outrageous, unsubstantiated claim. "Buffy's dead," she turned to Willow now, as though petitioning her to deny it. "Buffy. Dead," she spoke it as a challenge meant to be disproved. Cordelia grabbed at the knife and the can of mace clipped to her midsection and let both clatter to the floor. "Well, you're wrong," she told them, throwing her head back and forcing a smile like the spunky cheerleader she had been in high school. 

"I was there, Cordelia," Willow heard herself say, her voice hollow and unreal. "It's true." 

"No," Cordelia smiled at her in the way of someone who knows the correct answer at Trivial Pursuit because they're holding the card. "Buffy can't be dead. I would've felt something. A vision." Her mind clicked on this. "I would have had a vision, Willow. Doyle did. Something to warn us--something so that Angel would--Angel," and her mind seemed to hit a snag there. "Oh," she said, and her face fell, losing its upbeat cheerleader '_that's all right, that's okay, we're gonna beat you anyway_' grin, twisting instead into an expression Willow imagined was very like what she might wear following one of the aforementioned visions. 

Willow thought for a moment that she should go to Cordelia, pat her back, something. But even in such a moment she was still Willow and it was still Cordelia, and their shared past of awkwardness and dislike held her in her place. 

The office door opened and Angel, wearing his stoically-set human face (though perhaps he did angle his features away from them), made his way across the lobby and to the bottom of the stairwell. It was obvious that he had no intention of stopping to talk or comfort any of them, and Willow thought about what she had seen those moments ago in his office, and she couldn't blame him. He would go to his room, she thought, give himself over to grief in private. Gunn would tell the others what they needed to know; that there would be no trip to join up with the troops in Sunnydale, that the Slayer was gone, that...what was there to say after that? She didn't know. Perhaps Gunn did. 

Angel avoided eye-contact as he crossed the lobby, and Willow saw Cordelia's heart (of whose existence she had always been in doubt) leap into her eyes and move to propel her toward the grieving vampire, her outfit's coins jingling, and her mouth already parted to call Angel to a halt. Stepping forward, Cordelia was going to go after him. 

But Gunn put his arm out to stop her. "Let him go," he counseled, quietly, holding her back. "Man need to be alone." 

Cordelia immediately and forcefully pushed his arm aside and Gunn let her. She took two determined paces, hampered somewhat by the silly shoes she was wearing, her outfit rustling like ghost's chains. Her steps echoed against the marble. 

Angel had reached the landing and he paused at the sounds of Cordelia's noisy progress, but he did not turn, even though his stopping seemed to indicate he was considering changing course. As he paused, so did Cordelia, but after a moment Angel was climbing the stairs unmet and alone, and Cordelia had turned back to Willow and Gunn. As smoothly as something rehearsed, Gunn had his arms around Cordelia, or maybe Cordelia had her arms around him, and she looked up--first at Willow, then back to Gunn's face above her, and spoke. "I should have known. _They_ should have told me. I thought--I should have felt it. I should have felt it." 

Willow saw Gunn mouth the words, "it's okay," as he cradled Cordelia's face in his hands, and wiped her tears away with his thumbs. 

Something like shiver went through Willow and she took a step back. It was like she had trespassed into someone's bedroom, had been spying on them through the curtains. 

"So it _is_ true, then," a voice spoke softly into Willow's ear from over her shoulder. She came about, knowing her eyes had grown round as saucers. She had not heard anyone come in, yet standing directly behind her was a large, reptilian-like green demon, red-eyed and wearing a suit of the most brightly-colored cloth she had possibly ever seen. 

"The Host, at your service," he said in a gallant whisper. "But who I am is so _clearly_ not important _now_, Red." 

"Willow," she corrected him in whisper, just as he had spoken to her. "It's, Willow." 

"So Luis wasn't lying to me, hastily predicting the election results? Slayerina's really I-should-have-died-in-your-arms-tonight, '_There's a place for us, Tony, somewhere there's a place for us' reprise_-like dead?" 

The tears coming back into Willow's eyes proved to be answer enough for him. 

"Ah, Dollface, have you been here long?" From within his suit coat he produced an equally bright handkerchief, and held it out to her. 

"Forever," she whispered, taking the offered square of fabric. 

She turned her back on him to blow her nose, and when she looked up from the cloth she saw Cordelia and Gunn still locked in an embrace, Cordelia now wearing his coat draped over her shoulders. They stood there, like it was where they were meant to be in this moment, who they were supposed to be with, how they were supposed to cope. As though for them the evening had been part of a larger plan. It hit Willow quite suddenly and with surprising force that she wanted very much to go home. 

She sniffed, and as though the friendly demon Host had read her mind, his long, green arm snaked around her shoulders in a comforting manner she would not usually have ascribed to a demon. 

"C'mon, Witchey Woman," he offered. "I've got a spare, lightly-padded-to-my-tailor's-exact-specifications shoulder right here in the non-smoking section that's open 24-7 to listen to _whatever_ you want to tell it. One night only, no reservations necessary. Drinks--and hankies--on the house." He gave her an encouraging half-smile. 

Willow looked to him and then to Gunn and Cordelia. She thought of Angel. He would be up to his room by now, if that's where he had chosen to go first. Perhaps he was even lying next to or in place of the Willow-like shape she had inadvertantly left on his bed. 

She thought of the hallways of the Hyperion, abandoned, quiet. Rooms inhabited only by bird families, old oil-painting still lifes hanging above endless broken bedframes, electric switches that threw sparks at you if you dared flip them, elevator buttons that no longer had the strength to summon the lift's car. She had been there, she had walked those corridors, stepped through those doorways, made her way past fallen wallpaper, looking beyond the haze of memory that covered the upper floors of the Hyperion like a heavy dust. She had done it, and so would he. There was nothing there that could hurt him if he didn't let it, nothing at all. 

She sighed to herself and looked at the green demon waiting for his answer. A friendly shoulder, a warm embrace. It was the best offer that Willow Rosenberg had had in as long as she could remember. She did not hesitate in accepting. 

. 

...THE END... 

. 

Disclaimer: The characters of Buffy:TVS and Angel belong to Twentieth Century Fox, UPN and the WB respectively. I would not wish to represent otherwise. No one has given me the right to use them here. I took it by force. 

I have some other fics posted here, and in a few weeks when I re-code this fic (and it may also be moderately edited--at the least for punctuation and spelling) it will take its place at my own site, [The OutBack Fiction Shack][1], along with my other work. 

You have all been very generous with your feedback, even when it did threaten bodily harm on myself or others, and I thank you for keeping me writing. 

I don't think it's fair to either the viewers or the Buffy/Angel muse that Joss & Co. won't begin next season with the immediate fall-out of Willow's visit to LA, and more or less that's what powered me to write this fic. That moment of her on the couch is so moving only because of what comes next, however you choose to imagine it. 

Fred, in this last chapter, is singing "Thunder Road" by Bruce Springsteen. Thanks to chrysophyta for providing the lyrics courtesy Tori Amos performing it, and also for writing some of Fred's lines at my request. 

   [1]: http://www.royaltoby.com/shack



	9. Appendix

This "appendix" I'm adding is really more of just an author's self-indulgence. But I'm at peace with that, so...  
What follows here is an e-mail I wrote to a friend of mine on May 29th, shortly after the Buffy/Angel finales, in response to what I thought of how things ended. I had been reading a lot of message boards and friend's e-mails, etc. so I was more than a little briefed with how the finale had affected viewers. It was also the sign of the first glimmer in my mind that ultimately led to the writing of _Killing the Messenger_. It's full of implied IMHOs, and though they may not be rendered humbly they are honest.  
"People right now are very emotional about Buffy. People are responding right now neither to the finale arcs on _Buffy_ or _Angel_ as a whole (because they were more than sub-par for Joss & Co. and rather terrible), nor to the past seasons, respectively. Instead, they are responding to the last three or so minutes of _each_ episode.  
Which is okay. If anything, it shows the connection that the audience has for these characters--that even giving them silly things to do (read: Pylea), and Buffy a poor, ill-conceived reason to die, people still _care_. And even _knowing_ that Buffy will come back, people still _care_. That's the triumph here, I think. I don't count Buffy's first, "death" (at the hands of the Master). I think that was more like a clinical, operating-table moment. It didn't last long, it had no permanence, no one was even there to mourn her. This ("The Gift") is more like Angel's death (though he took his body with him) in season two, which was a very compelling plot moment.  
So, was I moved that Buffy died? Sure, I love her. Did I catch my breath and feel my emotional legs go out from under me when Angel saw Willow? Yeah. But both of those moments deserved much better things leading into them.  
I, for one, know that if it hadn't been on TV, Angel would never have said, "It's Buffy," out loud. He only said that to alert the viewers who hadn't seen the previous hour (though I doubt folks that watch Angel DON'T watch Buffy). He totally knew from the moment Willow was sitting there that Buffy was dead. There's really no other reason in the world for Willow to come to town alone and unannounced.  
I like to think that Willow was waiting at the hotel for days, staying perhaps in one of the rooms while the gang was trying to get out of Pylea. And just waiting, trying to figure out what to say, what to do once she told. I think I felt almost as equally bad for Willow in that moment as I did for Angel. They don't really have a relationship but yet in that moment they were alone in their grief, in that room, that city.  
I think, though, that Giles would have been more likely to go tell Angel, despite all that's happened between them. It would have been a nice way for him to have to step outside of himself to honor Buffy, knowing that she would have wanted someone to tell Angel.  
And I'm not sure they would have had her in the ground before Angel was told. (I think the _Buffy/Angel_ timeline has become a little screwy.)  
All in all, it's like my choir director used to say, the beginning and the end are what people remember, so give them good beginnings and fabulous ends and they'll have forgotten the middle. 


End file.
